Mkdir throws a warning, when it should be a bool? - php

Question

so the popular mkdir() function in php throws me a warning in the following code:
public function check_dir($dir, $create_dir = false) {
if (is_dir ( $dir )) {
return true;
} elseif ($create_dir == true) {
return mkdir ( $dir );
}
return false;
}
Its simple to know whats going on. So I won't explain. But on the mkdir() line I get:
Warning: mkdir(): Permission denied in /var/www/wordpress/wp-content/themes/Aisis-Framework/AisisCore/FileHandling/File.php on line 70
So while its a warning and nothing more, you should never turn of warnings in live, or any kind of error for that fact. So how do I deal with this when its clearly states it returns true or false and not a warning or fatal?

Answer 1

You can establish a custom error handler, which is a good practice in general: http://www.php.net/set-error-handler
You can use this to handle any PHP errors in any way you find appropriate. Short of that, you would have to either turn off error/warning logging (as you say, not a good practice), or use # suppression (which should be avoided in general, but might be suitable in this case.)
Personally I would agree that a function that returns true/false to indicate failure already doesn't need to issue a warning if it fails. But, that's PHP for you.

Answer 2

You should turn warning off in production servers ... But better still .. you can check for permission in your code ...
function checkDir($dir, $createDir = false) {
if ($createDir === true) {
if (is_dir($dir))
return true;
$baseDir = dirname($dir);
if (! is_dir($baseDir) || ! is_writable($baseDir)) {
return false;
}
return mkdir($dir);
} else {
return is_dir($dir);
}
return false;
}